I like Jane Austen. I think her writing was funny, and I think it translates well to modern life (when interpreted, of course). And I think that her writing had a lot of heart to it. I still get anxious butterfly-ish every time I read Emma and get to the part with Emma and Mr. Knightley’s walk around the garden.

The point is, I like Jane Austen.

I did not like Becoming Jane.

There is nothing redeeming about the movie save for the scene in the beginning where James McAvoy’s character goes to a party and has to sit and listen to Jane read a long, boring, pointless story about her sister and fiancee to her sister and fiancee (and acted all, like, I’ll read it because everyone twisted my arm, like she didn’t write the story, come down with the story, and sit with it in her lap all afternoon waiting for someone to tell her to go read it), and he falls asleep. The movie is over-long and turns what historians have decided was basically nothing into the greatest romance ever. Jane is obnoxious and gawky and awk and embarrassing. Tom seems mildly grossed out by her and then mildly amused by her and then mildly interested in her, while she gets mad at the slightest mention of his name, and then suddenly they’re in love, but there seems to be a huge leap from how they felt to how they felt and I don’t like it.

The movie actually is guilty of a much bigger offense, though, and it has to do with James McAvoy. Because, I don’t understand how, in all of his other movies, he went from, like,

Bleached Hair Hot (no, seriously)

to Nerdy Hot

to Kinda Dirty Hot

to 1930s Hot

to Brandishing a Gun Hot

to… Creepy Old Leprechaun?

I mean… what kind of … what??

And I don’t even want to get into the alternate universe where, 20 years later, Jane’s older brother and MUCH older sister-in-law look like this:

but, Jane and Tom manage to look like this:

Were the stylists just effing with everyone? Seriously?

Oh, and one more thing. I promise.

Is that supposed to be hyperbole? Because, way to overstate, writers. Jane Austen wrote two great novels (Pride & Prejudice and Emma), two entertaining novels (Northanger Abbey and Persuasion), and two craptacularly boring novels (Mansfield Park and Sense & Sensibility). Even if you disagree about which novels fit into which of those categories, I think we can all agree: six of the greatest novels of the English language? That’s some bullshit.